Looming Mir Reentry Spawns Parliament Action, Preparations, Expedition

The Russian parliament is debating Mir’s fate as Rosaviacosmos makes preparations for the station’s reentry in mid-March. A small group of space professionals and enthusiasts are making plans to charter an aircraft to witness the reentry of the Russian Mir space station.

Russian space officials have delayed the tentative date for the reentry of the Mir space station until mid March. It has been predicted that atmospheric conditions during this later period would allow more of the station to burn up as it reenters Earth's atmosphere. The station is losing from 200 to 800 meters (656 feet to a half-mile) altitude daily, depending on the condition of Earth's atmosphere. The station's estimated orbital life (with a 15 percent error margin), is that is may last through March 26, plus or minus seven days. Russia has requested assistance from both NASA and the European Space Agency, but indicated that Mir will be de-orbited by “national means alone”. NASA has agreed to provide data received by its radar stations to Russia's Mission Control Center. Simulations between Russian and U.S. ground stations could begin shortly. The joint exercises will help prepare teams for the exchange of precise tracking data on Mir as the station enters its final orbits around Earth. The reentry zone for Mir is about 6,000 kilometers (3,726 miles) long and 200 kilometers (124 miles) wide.

A cosmonaut crew continues to stand by for a mission to Mir to manually deorbit in case the ditching operations go wrong, but most likely the launch will not be required. Mir is expected to reach 250 kilometers (155 miles) altitude on March 8, plus or minus 5 days. That height is a critical altitude for docking of an “emergency crew” with the station. It still may fly to Mir in case of a major malfunction though it would have to rely only on food and water supplies brought in the Soyuz spacecraft. Once the station drops below 250 kilometers (155 miles), no manned spacecraft will be able to dock to the station without posing risk to its crew.

Meanwhile, the governing body of Russia's lower house of Parliament is set to consider on February 20 a draft resolution introduced by the Communist faction for preventing the planned deorbiting of the Russian space station Mir. The coordinating council of the People's Patriotic Union approved the draft after speeches at a council meeting on February 12 by State Duma (lower house) speaker Gennady Seleznyov and Duma deputy Svetlana Savitskaya. The resolution would recommend that the President and government urgently set up a commission to prevent Mir's being sent plunging back to Earth over the Pacific ocean and consider keeping it in use.

Bob Citron, founder of SpaceHab and Kistler Aerospace, is organizing a trip with his brother Rick Citron. The pair have a 30-year background in managing scientific trips to view solar eclipses and volcanic eruptions all over the world. The expedition will take about 120 researchers and paying members of the public. A chartered widebody jet will take the group above the clouds to a position some 322 km (200 miles) away from the projected track of the reentry. About 20 friends, colleagues and serious amateur astronomers have expressed interest in paying about US$6,500 each for the trip. The expedition party will assemble in the South Pacific a few days prior to the projected re-entry date. There, the group will await precise timing and tracking data from Russia's Mission Control, NASA, and the European Space Agency. Expedition leaders will then plot a flight plan for both the optimum and safest viewing route.

The expedition will include nonpaying scientific researchers and a television crew who will film the event as part of a documentary on the Mir. The reentry will be filmed by documentarian Bob Tur. Some live media will be made available during the flight, via the Internet.

Four senior Mir Cosmonauts, one of the designers of the Mir Space Station, and a Russian space journalist and historian will be among the participants. The Russian cosmonauts on board the observation plane will be in direct communications with the Korolev Mission Control Center in Moscow during the final phase of the Mir deorbit.

·        Sergey Avdeyev, one of the world's most well-traveled cosmonauts who flew three missions to Mir, one of which lasted over a year

·        Vladimir Titov, has spent a total of 387 days, 52 minutes, 18 seconds in space, and has logged a total of 18 hours, 48 minutes of Exterior Vehicular Activity in open space

·        Elena Kondakova, From October 4, 1994 through March 22, 1995, fulfilled her first flight on board the spacecraft Soyuz TM-17 and the Mir orbital complex as a flight engineer

·        Sergey Zaletin, the cosmonaut commander of the final mission to Mir

·        Leonid Gorshkov, one of Russia's premier space station designers and one of the chief architects of Mir

·        Yuri Karash, aerospace advisor to the Governor of Moscow, who has himself gone through cosmonaut training and is an expert on the Russian space program as well as a leading space historian and journalist

U.S. Government assets will be monitoring the Mir re-entry but are precluded from participating in the event with airborne assets due to government liability issues and the fact that this is a Russian show.

For more information check out:  http://www.MirReentry.com

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